Davo epoxy restoration questions

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Someone brought by this old davo epoxy fish to fix up. The main issue is that the glass is rubbing his legs and getting itchy. What causes this?? To me it looks like an absolute terrible sand job originally and then some type of speed coat was maybe sprayed on to cover the weave and it has worn off over time? The exposed weave follows the whole freelap on the bottom as well. The deck was spray painted by owner to try and stop the itch....throwing in a picture of that a bunch of pinholes in the lam. Was it simply the epoxy they were using back then? Didnt davo work with greg loher in florida some?? Planning on just doing a hotcoat/gloss and leaving it at that. Any thoughts ??? Thanks sways!

I've seen loads of boards with that sort of sun damage. You may be correct on the 'speed finish' wearing off but I've seen it with regular gloss coats as well (and on some recent professionally glassed boards.) The pin holes through the paint might be from some exposed weave that had some wax caught in the depressions(?) Depending on the type of coating you decide on, I would still test it on the board. Some paints, speed finishes, and certainly old wax that has melted in to the exposed weave can wreak havoc on your finish. You might try some Coleman fuel on a clean rag and get as much of the residual stuff off of there as possible. Sometimes just sanding spreads it around and into your sanding grooves. You will know if you encounter fisheyes, craters, or little pin holes that the surface wasn't clean enough.

yeah i find it hard to believe that the board would have been sanded so poorly. those dudes were making pretty solid boards. Does the sun degrade the epoxy and make it wear off? It is odd that is only on the rail/lap areas. If i just do another epoxy gloss will the weave disappear?

Once you have de-contaminated the board as much as possible (wiping with liberal amounts of solvent - sorry, it's the only thing that works), then sanded off that crappy spraypaint, then de-contaminated some more, you may still want to consider doing a polyester hotcoat instead of epoxy.

The reason is I say this is there will still be - despite your best efforts - small bits of contamination that you just can't get out of the pores and exposed weave of that glass job. There's a 99% chance you'll still get gobs of fisheyes in an epoxy coat. On the other hand, the styrene in the polyester resin can help cut through those last bits of contaminant and allow it to cover them. There's no guarantees, but it'll improve your odds of success. (Mind you, I love epoxy.)

We deal with situations like this all the time in my job as a spray painter. Waterborne paints require almost surgical cleanliness to avoid fisheyes, whereas old-school paints with lots of petroleum-based solvents can muscle through questionable prep work. Epoxy isn't waterborne, but it doesn't have the solvents either. Unless you add xylene, which I don't know how much that would help.

Hi newschoolblue -
Agreed on all points. I know of a guy who does a xylene wipe down before applying his epoxy fill coats. They seem to turn out nice and flat. Xylene is a bit hard to come by in California but I wonder if it might help with a recoat like Deez is attempting?